It may be a holiday, but I suspect it's one when a lot of people are travelling to parades and festivals, and many still have to work. Irish Rail have posters up encouraging people to use the train to get to St Patrick's day events.

And yet they operate a Sunday service on this day?

There isn't a train that will get me to Dublin before 9am (and only one that gets me there before 10am because the Enterprise is still operating a weekday service).

bad as the train is, the fact that dublin bus uses a sunday service is a joke. my childhood is jam packed with memories of having to walk to the terminus to get a 36 bus into the parade, and the chaos in getting on the bus would be full at the terminus. the same with the old 13 and any other bus.

bad as the train is, the fact that dublin bus uses a sunday service is a joke. my childhood is jam packed with memories of having to walk to the terminus to get a 36 bus into the parade, and the chaos in getting on the bus would be full at the terminus. the same with the old 13 and any other bus.

wonder if it is the same now?

Not quite true.

Dublin Bus operated a Sunday schedule but with untimetabled extras operating on all corridors, filling in the gaps when required to meet demand.

These operated before and after the parade.

From what I could see they worked very well with the buses coping with the demand.

On the whole the arrangements on the Connolly side of the house worked reasonably well with DARTs busy but not under undue pressure. Regular Drogheda trains were heavily loaded with the near secret additional services lightly used. There were a good few DART specials but many of them were lighly loaded as they were too late to be of use to the majority of parade goers.

Of particular note were the miserable services from Rosslare and Sligo with the first trains arriving after 1200. In contrast on the Belfast line almost 1000 passengers had arrived on Enterprise and relief services by 1015.

Of particular note were the miserable services from Rosslare and Sligo with the first trains arriving after 1200

You could argue the Sligo route has a poor service on a regular Saturday with the first train not arriving until 10.00, a time that's fine from Sligo but surly there is demand from Longford and inbound earlier with a lot of commuter traffic.

I would probably take the family to Dublin from Longford a few times a year if there was an earlier train. There are quite a few things for kids that start around 10 on a Saturday that the first train is just too late for. I've made a couple of submissions to the NTA about this. They could even operate earlier morning services and later evening services with buses to see if there was demand but of course this is impossible.

There is a 4 car and an 8 car ICR parked up in Longford for most of the weekend - I think all they get used for is a student special from Carrick during the winter. So there are even trains in place to operate such a service.

People are always dismissive about the need for extra services on the Sligo line, but the reality is that it carries almost the same number of passengers as Belfast with considerably shorter hours of operation and much poorer on-board amenities.